Sunday, August 9, 2009

Million Per Metro

Pinning good transit to a metro population level seems like a good idea to me. In India, regions of 1M or more population will now be eligible for 50% federal funding for a metro system if the locals paid the other half. Here in the United States, regions are lucky to get 50% funding for one commuter or light rail line. I think we should go even lower. A region of 750,000 or more should start construction so by the time that other 250,000 moved in they would have options as to where to live along the newly constructed lines.

Imagine if we had metro subways in all of our metro areas over 1 million people as a base for greater transit improvements. Considering between 1990 and 2005 about 45% of new transit trips were made on metro subway systems, it stands to reason that the construction of these networks connecting the major employment and population centers in a regions core will dramatically increase transit ridership. Look what has happened in Washington DC over the last 40 years or so. That is something we should emulate and India gives us a view into how to do it. Where's that type of vision for America?

Wha? Just because LA barely managed to add some heavy rail passengers at $100m/mile, in a fiasco from which the city is still recovering, does not mean that its the right choice for Indianapolis, Nashville, and KC. Even with federal match, 50% of infinity is still infinity.

In percentage growth over the same period, Heavy Rail grew only 20%, Commuter Rail grew by 29%, and Light Rail grew at a whopping 218%. That's because Light Rail was 'proving itself' in places like Charolette and Dallas. For budgetary reasons, in many of these places it was not a choice between heavy rail and light rail, it was a choice between light rail and bus.

$100m/mile is just too darn expensive for a new system in a medium-big city.

A city with 1 million people is not the same thing in the US as in India, and the difference is density. For a heavy rail metro to be effective, you need to have a certain level of trip density, and for that you generally need a certain level of population density. Because San Jose has a population of 1 million, and I'm pretty sure it's not ready for a heavy rail metro just yet.

You can get much higher density of land uses without (much) transit. The original office parks were mostly single-story buildings. In the 90s, 3 story became fairly typical, and now it's 5 story, and in some cases as high as 8. Of course, they're still building parking structures, which would be a waste of money and an incentive to drive if a metro were eventually built, but it's still a pretty major increase in density.

Ultimately, I think the conventional justification for building a metro is the right one: it's what you do when the abilities of surface transit just isn't enough, whether because of capacity or because there's just not enough room in a dense city center. San Jose isn't at that stage yet, and can do just fine with surface light rail and commuter rail, and just maybe a light rail tunnel in downtown or something. The VTA light rail actually isn't so bad, aside from two mistakes of sidewalk running through downtown, and failing to serve the busiest commute corridors.

I agree arcady, I think the VTA would be better off biconnecting its lightrail network (run along the foothill expressway and loop back to mountain view; a direct line parallel to alum rock rd) and adding in some cross-linking (stephens creek road; el camino real; saratoga rd from saratoga to santa clara uni (connecting with ECR-LR and cal train); connect winchester line with alum rock via capitol corridor/hillsdale/camden; extend almaden line along alamden expressway and perhaps blossom hill road from santa teressa line to los gatos (meeting los gatos extension).

dreaming I know, but I believe that SJ has the density to operate a dense LR network, especially if more effort were put into minimising trip times.

Also, the reason most of the increase since 1990 has been in heavy rail is that most of the increase has been on the New York City Subway, which went from about a billion riders in 1990 to 1.4 billion in 2005.

wrt your point, you really should be thinking and applying my typology for the nation's various levels of interconnected transit networks. Links to my two major posts on this are listed within this entry: http://urbanplacesandspaces.blogspot.com/2009/08/flawed-argumentation-on-transit-and.html

I'm transitioning my writing over to my other site which was previously called The Direct Transfer. People seemed to be confused by the differences in brand between The Overhead Wire and The Direct Transfer so I made a change and combined the two as The Overhead Wire.

This page will continue to be here and will still be updated sparingly as it has over the last few years, however new original analysis and writing will be featured at TheOverheadWire.com in addition to the news archive and The Overhead Wire Daily email.